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Why is it so hard to lean topicmaps?

Peter Van Dijck has posted a blog entry about how hard it is to learn topicmaps. To quote:

So when you're interested in topicmaps, you read the specs or one of these tutorials, and unless you're familiar with data models and a bunch of advanced metadata concepts (reification anyone?), it's gonna blow your head. Many people give up right there. The distance between the topicmap model and a real life application seems larger than the distance between the relational database model and a real life application.

I think Peter has definitely hit the key issue with topic maps, and it certainly matches my personal experience.

Posted by jamesr on April 01, 2004 12:33 PM
Categories: Information architecture, XML

Comments

I totally agree with Peter. I first heard about topicmaps a couple of years ago when I was visiting ontopias office here in Oslo. To be honest I didn't even understand what it was supposed to be used for. I've written my own tutorial in norwegian. Maybe I should translate it.

Posted by: Thomas Flemming on June 14, 2004 11:57 PM